A not so enjoyable heist novel. Intriguing premise, but it was too dry for the most part and the pacing bugged me.

Ultimately, I felt the dark, underside of London was the main character in this book. And not sure I liked that. On one hand, I learned a great deal about London criminals and the like (some of which I wish I hadn't learned; the dog fights especially, agh!) but I don't feel like I ever really got to know each of the players in the robbery as individual characters, I didn't really care about any of them. And not because they were criminals--just leave it to movies like "Oceans 11" to make criminals endearing--but because I just felt so bogged down in the slang and the minor details of the plot that I don't feel the characters were sufficiently developed. Too, some of the pacing was off, inserting long passages like something from a history textbook in the middle of an event. I felt like Crichton had done rather a lot of research on the times and just wanted to be sure he could fit it all in somehow.

Still, I did find some aspects of the story interesting and I certainly admire Crichton's grasp of the slang (though I felt rather like I was listening to a conversation in a language I had only taken one semester of in college or something, catching only half the words and conjecturing for the rest!) and the research, but ultimately it was rather a relief to finish it.

I have to say this one was really, really, really good and I was entertained thoroughly. Expected maybe okay and was pleasantly surprised; certainly that has an effect on how I rate a book. I was excited to get back and read this book every time I picked it up which is definitely not always the case. Reminded me of a milder version of In Cold Blood. A nonfiction historical “novel” about a crime where lots of information was taken directly from trial transcripts. Extremely engaging. Germane information from the Victorian era. Great characterization. Entertaining dialogue. A touch of true crime intrigue. I’d highly recommend this book.

This is the book which introduced me to Michael Crichton, and his inimitable way of mixing fact and fiction so that the borders are blurred, like shading is done in watercolour paintings. I loved it enough to read almost all of his remaining works.

As some critic once said: "Michael Crichton is too serious to be considered a popular writer, and too popular to be considered serious." Spot on.

Author Michael Crichton takes pains to emphasize that, much the same as Clavell's Shogun, this is a work of fiction. Still, it employs a historical tone albeit a juicy one. As such it's mostly a setting-and-plot novel with little concern for characters and relationships. This novel is thus based on the actual thieves and the infamous train robbery of 1855.

The mastermind (Edward Pierce) undertakes to rob a train, which makes a regular run with gold bullion. The booty was locked in two custom-built safes that required four keys to open - two held by two different bankers and two stored at a railroad office. Pierce is a genteel and amoral rouge whose good clothes, speech, and manners confer the veneer of a “gentleman”. He mingles effortlessly amongst the upper-middle class - and he is without doubt a leader (not really a "peer") amongst his fellow criminals. They endeavor to copy all four “betties”. This effort occupies the bulk of the novel which richly details the criminal underclass and atmosphere of 1850s Victorian England - London in particular.

Crichton uses the various vernaculars of the time and place - those of the professional banking class and especially of the criminal underworld.

For instance, when a professional thief refers to an acquaintance he is said to be "in” or "out" (of prison). A “magsman” is what we would call a con artist. A “snakesman” is a child or a small man who can break into an home or office through a chimney or other tight spot.

Pierce first “put up a lay” (financed the caper) in April 1854, when he bought Robert Agar a drink at the Bull and Bear. Agar was an expert "screwsman" (safe cracker and key-copier) who had never been “in”.

Pierce himself was a master “cracksman”, a burglar, who had been working other towns to build up his stake.

Crichton gives us a glimpse of London's dog fighting scene - a place where all the classes mingle. This is crucial to Pierce's attempt to copy one of the Bankers’ keys. Between fights he strikes up a conversation and insinuates himself into the Banker's home and trust - eating at his table and feigning martial interest in his unmarried daughter (an “old maid” in her late-twenties).

This leads to a suspenseful and successful “waxman’s” impression of the key.

I’ll leave it to readers to discover the rest of this thoroughly entertaining novel.


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VACATION RE-READ (NOVEMBER 2017)

I was happy to find a copy of "Train Robbery" on my hurriedly packed e-reader while travelling on vacation. I am happier to report that this third read exceeds the first two, so in order to whet your appetites, I offer a little background from the Introduction.

In 1855 Edward Pearce and his compatriots replaced gold worth 12,000 "pounds sterling" with a roughly equivalent weight in lead shot - a "trade" rightly regarded as Grand Theft.

This is roughly equivalent to about 1.2-million not-sterling British Pounds or slightly more than 1.6-million 2017 dollars. However, Crichton is quick to point out that "there had been a dozen more lucrative robberies in the same period":

the Victorians always referred to this crime in capital letters, as The Great Train Robbery. Contemporary observers labeled it The Crime of the Century and The Most Sensational
Exploit of the Modern Era. The adjectives applied to it were all strong: it was "unspeakable," "appalling," and "heinous."Even in an age given to moral overstatement, these terms suggest some profound impact upon everyday consciousness.

To understand why the Victorians were so shocked by the theft, one must understand something about the meaning of the railways. Victorian England was the first urbanized, industrialized society on earth, and it evolved with stunning rapidity.

Crichton continues:

(ca. 1815) England was a predominantly rural nation of thirteen million people. (By 1850), the population had nearly doubled to twenty-four million, and half the people lived in urban centers....the conversion from agrarian life seemed to have occurred almost overnight; indeed, the process was so swift that no one really understood it.

Crichton goes on to demonstrate this assertion in some detail, summarizing the effects of the early Industrial Revolution - then he comes to railroads:

prior to 1830 there were (few) railways in England. All transportation between cities was by horse-drawn coach... By 1850, five thousand miles of track crisscrossed the nation, providing cheap and increasingly swift transportation for every citizen. Inevitably the railways came to symbolize progress.

to the Victorian mind such progress implied moral as well as material advancement...Progress in physical conditions (would lead) inevitably to the eradication of social evils and criminal behavior- which would be swept away much as the slums that housed these evils and criminals were, from time to time, swept away. It seemed a simple matter of eliminating the cause and, in due course, the effect.

From this comfortable perspective, it was absolutely astonishing to discover that "the criminal class" had found a way to prey upon progress-and indeed to carry out a crime aboard the very hallmark of progress, the railway. The fact that the robbers also overcame the finest safes of the day only increased the consternation.

Without question, a definable subculture of professional criminals existed a hundred years ago in mid-Victorian England. Many of its features were brought to light in the trial of Burgess, Agar, and Pierce, the chief participants in The Great Train Robbery. They were all apprehended in 1856, nearly two years after the event. Their voluminous courtroom testimony is preserved, along with journalistic accounts of the day. It is from these sources that the following narrative is assembled.

This 1975 best seller is an excellent historical novel of a most famous heist, drawn from court transcripts. The author gives us not just the heist but also describes London (and her relations) in 1855, peppered with a dose of Victorian criminal slang.

The majority of chapters are the planning and preparation, many months of work. The heist itself and aftermath are quickly told, but the plot is not without twists for those who don't know the details. I greatly enjoyed this trip through Victorian London.

After reading the wikipedia article, I see that Crichton's account was, in their words, "highly fictionalized". I also somehow missed that this book had been turned into a movie, and will add it to my ever growing list of films to see.

Se trata de una crónica novelada del robo perfecto. Allá en la Inglaterra victoriana de 1855, un carismático, metódico y sagaz delincuente llamado Edward Pierce planifica y ejecuta el robo de varios lingotes de oro que iban a ser trasladados de Inglaterra a Francia por tren. Para ello se alia con el hábil cerrajero Agar, y con varios cómplices y delincuentes de poca monta, a quienes incluso nunca revela el golpe final, sino que los va usando para acciones puntuales, hasta llegar al día del robo. Aunque, el propio Pierce es quien más participa tanto intelectual como físicamente de todos los pasos que le llevarían a dar el gran golpe. Se trata de una aventura fascinante, en la que el autor no solo narra los hechos y diálogos basados en las declaraciones de los juicios del propio Pierce, sino que además, introduce cada capítulo con una bien fundamentada contextualización histórica de la Inglaterra de aquellos años y el por qué de cada hecho, cuya explicación siempre está contenida en el marco social y político de la época. Aunque escrito en 1975, es un libro -se puede decir de "aventuras"- con un ritmo trepidante, que atrapa la lectura, no solo por tratarse del relato de un crimen ingenioso, sino por tener una sólida investigación histórica. En su tiempo fue un best-seller y se lo llevó a fines de los setenta al cine. Ahora a ver la adaptación.

Disappointing and dull. Michael Crichton usually writes real page-turners; this is not one of them. There is an introduction which sets the scene, presumably so that we can understand how shocking a train robbery would have seemed to the Victorians, since rail travel was new, a positive and impressive development. The introduction is written in textbook fashion, and the novel itself continues in the same boring vein.

I read this long ago. My first Crichton. But I know better than to revisit early Crichton, like "Congo". This author improved with age. A LOT!

Should be a 3.5, the background of the time period in some of the chapters was a bit much. Not what I expected this book to be. but still an interesting read. Especially if you like historical true crime.

The images conjured up by Victorian London have always been the ones I as a reader love reveling in. Horse drawn carriages, gas light lit streets, the upright manners and social norms that put a set of most beastly human urges on a leash, heights of monetary decadence and abject pits of poverty abound in these images that I make up in my mind. One part of why I adore Mr.Holmes, like many others is undoubtedly such an image of London and thereabouts. I wouldn't have been this taken by the detective if he were from some other part of the world. All this preamble leads me to say that I am quite enraptured by some stories set in this world for it is one of those locations in literature I easily identify with.

The story line is as simple as the books title suggests. It's an account of how an extremely intelligent thief plots a master heist at a time when railways were a novelty. The magnitude of the crime and the apparent lack of precedents make it a public uproar and then the story follows a very predictable route. What makes it a very endearing read is the way the author reconstructs the era in the backdrop,speech and detailed descriptions. There are points when Crichton digs up seemingly trivial matters of description about railways, hansom cabs or butlers during that era which later finds a use somewhere along the story. A lot of journals, books and memoirs are referenced and they have been sewn in without awkwardness into the tale. The focal point is the enigmatic mastermind, Edward Pierce who maintains a dignified and collected composure while pulling off the seemingly impossible. This enigma in fact turned the tables for me as most of the major characters do not have any character histories and not knowing anything about them made me not care for them at all. There were a few loose ends which the author left untied and I could not figure out where they all were accommodated in the tale. The clear winner in the tale is the language and the dialect used in conversation which truly sets it apart. Most of it I could only guess at on the basis of a general understanding of the context but it was a delight by all means.

Very very close to a Hollywood flick in its execution but it all works and that is what matters. The book being an early work of Crichton also has its own charm.

So you thought Michael Crichton only writes sci-fi techno thrillers? Same here. The Great Train Robbery is proof that the man is far more versatile than I gave him credit for, as he crafts a superb piece of historical fiction. As always I’ll give you the good, the bad and the ugly and tell you why I think you should read this novel. Which you should!



The premise itself is the planning, organisation and execution of one of the most famous heists in history. Crichton brilliantly blends fact and fiction to give us a highly involving and immersive story, where you come away feeling like you’ve learned something. This book could in fact be considered a handbook for robbing a train. In a bustling nineteenth century London, the author precisely portrays the landscape giving us a vivid snapshot of life at the time. The extravagant prosperity of the upper class in Victorian London, existing side by side with the abject poverty. He mixes this with a good slice of humour, illustrating some of the bizarre social conceptions at the time. We get to see a highly questionable cure for syphilis, spring loaded caskets and the excitement of a good public hanging.

n  "The behaviour of the public reflected some fatal flaw in the character of the English mind"n

There’s also some excellent character work in this one. We have Edward Pierce, the mysterious gent and “putter-up” who walks the tightrope of upper class life ,while bringing together a team to carry out the crime of the century. Robert Agar, the Screwsman (locksmith), Clean Willy who specialises in getting through tight holes, Barlow the hired muscle and Miss Miriam the hot bit of stuff. These are all real characters that were involved in the crime and Crichton does a solid job of bringing them to life.

n  "Even Victoria herself was not immune to the fascination with this most bold and dastardly rogue, whom she should like to perceive at first hand."n



The only real negative is the writing. As I mentioned in my review of The Andromeda Strain, Crichton is not going to knock you over with his prose and he certainly could not be considered a wordsmith. I really appreciate authors that have a flair for the written word and he is quite basic. But it doesn’t interfere with the telling of a good old-fashioned story that has an intense, fast paced conclusion. The dialogue is top notch and feels really reflective of the time, if sometimes a little confusing. It all helps in giving the reader an authentic feel, which from my experience is a Crichton trademark.

What’s left to say, other than if anyone knows how to crack a safe and fancies joining me on a nice bit of criminal enterprise leave me a message. A thoroughly good and enjoyable piece of historical fiction.